COVID-19 has tried it, but the young peo­ple of T&T are not con­tent­ed to sit by and let hate-mon­gers de­ter­mine this coun­try’s new nor­mal. Fol­low­ing a slew of racial­ly-charged com­ments and bit­ter ex­changes be­tween In­do-Trinida­di­ans and Afro-Trinida­di­ans on so­cial me­dia in the wake of the re­cent­ly-con­clud­ed Gen­er­al Elec­tions, T&T’s youth have pushed back in the hopes of launch­ing a re­gion­al move­ment against racism; ul­ti­mate­ly re­in­forc­ing re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al trends.

Prompt­ed by a one-minute video by 17-year old Sachin Balkissoon on the so­cial me­dia plat­form Tik Tok, many young peo­ple have been shar­ing the elec­tron­ic mes­sage and post­ing videos of their own de­nounc­ing racial di­vi­sion in T&T.

On Au­gust 12, Balkissoon took the ini­tial stance re­ject­ing racism and called on oth­ers to speak up un­der the hash­tag: my­coun­tryy­our­coun­try. Some of his fel­low con­tent cre­ators and oth­er youths, in gen­er­al, re­spond­ed by col­lab­o­rat­ing with him in an­oth­er video bear­ing the hash­tags: my­coun­tryy­our­coun­try en­dracism trinidadand­to­ba­go.

They made de­c­la­ra­tions like: “It is time for us to do bet­ter!” and “We are our own gen­er­a­tion… stamp­ing out racism is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” as strains of “God Bless Our Na­tion” emerged in the back­ground.

The my­coun­tryy­our­coun­try hash­tag has gar­nered around 700 shares and over 150,000 col­lec­tive views on Face­book, In­sta­gram and oth­er so­cial me­dia ac­counts.

In a sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with Balkissoon, bear­ing the hash­tag: everycreedan­drace and post­ed on Au­gust 17, young peo­ple across the coun­try from Port-of-Spain through Tu­na­puna, To­co, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go again de­nounced racism and pro­mot­ed T&T as a hap­py, all-em­brac­ing so­ci­ety, amidst back­drops of this coun­try’s pic­turesque beach­es and flo­ra and fau­na. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there were oth­ers who post­ed videos of their own.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Ltd on Tues­day via phone, Balkissoon said he was so shocked last week by the racial on­slaught against each oth­er by this coun­try’s two ma­jor eth­nic groups, he had a phys­i­cal re­ac­tion.

“Af­ter the elec­tions, my feed on so­cial me­dia and oth­er friends’ ac­counts ex­plod­ed with racist com­ments; East In­di­ans (In­do-Trinida­di­ans) against Africans (Afro-Trinida­di­ans), Africans (Afro-Trinida­di­ans) against (In­do-Trinida­di­ans) In­di­ans. It was dis­gust­ing. Peo­ple said it made them cry. Per­son­al­ly, I vom­it­ed. It was some re­al­ly heinous stuff.

“It made you sick, it put your mood off…and my friends col­lec­tive­ly had an op­po­si­tion to it. It was hor­ri­ble,” he re­called.

Stress­ing that he had no claim on the an­ti-racism move­ment led by the youth, Balkissoon ex­plained that he was just ar­tic­u­lat­ing what his peers were feel­ing and had to speak out, es­pe­cial­ly to try to bring heal­ing to his friends around him who were hurt­ing.

The youth who has ramped up over 17.9 k fol­low­ers since he start­ed cre­at­ing short videos last Au­gust as a means of com­ic re­lief for young peo­ple, said he had hoped his ini­tial video would help shift an “out­dat­ed” mind­set which he felt had plagued gen­er­a­tions for “too long” in this coun­try.

Apart from be­ing ap­palling, Balkissoon felt the height­ened an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween the races was “wor­ri­some” be­cause left unchecked, it could be nor­malised in this coun­try.“The way the coun­try was mov­ing if peo­ple be­came more racist, we wouldn’t be able to hang out in the same way any­more. There would be this big di­vide be­tween us,” he ex­pressed.

The The­atre Arts stu­dent of Princes Town West Sec­ondary, who for­mer­ly at­tend­ed Cowen Hamil­ton Sec­ondary in Moru­ga, said he cher­ished his days of grow­ing up in his “sanc­tu­ary” of Princes Town among and at­tend­ing school with oth­er eth­nic groups.

“I didn’t see those com­ments (last week) com­ing from my age group,” he said.

He be­lieves that be­cause so­cial me­dia pro­vides a high de­gree of anonymi­ty, peo­ple feel free to bul­ly each oth­er and spew hate.

Hav­ing re­ceived pos­i­tive feed­back from young peo­ple in places like Guyana, Ja­maica and New Del­hi, Ba­likissoon said he and oth­er con­tent cre­ators want to in­ten­si­fy their ef­forts to stamp out racism.

He said the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence has made him think deep­er about his pre­vi­ous­ly lighter Tik Tok con­tent and be­come more sen­si­tive to oth­er peo­ple’s feel­ings in gen­er­al.

Balkissoon has the sup­port of his par­ents, Sher­ry and Ro­hit, with the lat­ter shar­ing that his son had al­ways been a “peo­ple per­son” who em­braced every­one.

One of the young peo­ple who col­lab­o­rat­ed with Balkissoon is 19-year-old Kyle Ben­nett from D'Abadie.

“This was my first time ac­tive­ly vot­ing, so I was pay­ing close at­ten­tion to pol­i­tics on so­cial me­dia. I al­ways had an idea of what was go­ing on in terms of racism and seg­re­ga­tion in our coun­try, but this was a whole oth­er lev­el of racism, seg­re­ga­tion and prej­u­dice,” said via What­sApp.

The In­sta­gram and YouTube con­tent cre­ator who plans to study ro­bot­ics en­gi­neer­ing said peo­ple of his gen­er­a­tion who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ha­tred ad­mit­ted they were just mim­ic­k­ing their par­ents and grand­par­ents.

“I be­lieve that our gen­er­a­tion is tru­ly the fu­ture of our coun­try and that means that this gen­er­a­tional racism, seg­re­ga­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion does not have to con­tin­ue with us, we can put a stop to it,” Ben­net in­sist­ed.

T&T YOUTH PUSH BACK, SET THE PACE

Q&A with Shan­ice Webb, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Youth Coun­cil (TYC).

In light of an ap­par­ent resur­gence of youth in­volve­ment in lo­cal is­sues, Guardian Me­dia Ltd chat­ted with Shan­ice Webb, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Youth Coun­cil for her take on such de­vel­op­ments.

1. Please out­line the aim of the TYC.

The Trinidad Youth Coun­cil is an all-in­clu­sive, non-par­ti­san, non-gov­ern­men­tal, non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, youth-led, youth-ori­ent­ed, youth-struc­tured na­tion­al youth move­ment which aims to syn­chro­nise youth de­vel­op­ment at the grass­roots and wider com­mu­ni­ty lev­el.

2. Tell me a lit­tle about your role as pres­i­dent.

I have been pres­i­dent of the Coun­cil for the past three years. I have rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. I’m a part of the UNFP Youth Ad­vi­so­ry Board. We’ve done projects and ini­tia­tives geared to­wards youth de­vel­op­ment and en­gage­ment; our most re­cent ini­tia­tive hav­ing been a youth Covid-19 re­sponse. We al­so worked on a vir­tu­al youth sum­mit ear­li­er this year.

3. Young peo­ple have been send­ing a re­sound­ing mes­sage on so­cial me­dia in re­sponse to the bar­rage of racist com­ments which fol­lowed the re­cent Gen­er­al Elec­tions. How do you feel about this de­vel­op­ment?

It is ex­cel­lent that young peo­ple are re­al­ly and tru­ly push­ing back against the nar­ra­tive of racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. It clear­ly shows that young peo­ple are tak­ing charge and say­ing that we are go­ing to make a dif­fer­ence with our gen­er­a­tion and I think that is key; be­ing able to set the pace; the ex­am­ple to every­one else and show that we are will­ing to make a dif­fer­ent choice.

4. With­in re­cent times this coun­try has seen an in­creased in­ter­est in the youth par­lia­ment, po­lit­i­cal ex­perts stress­ing the im­por­tance of the youth vote in na­tion­al elec­tions…even youths in East Port-of-Spain tak­ing to the streets in the wake of the deaths of their peers at the hands of po­lice. Would you say the youth have in­ten­si­fied their thrust to­wards shap­ing T&T so­ci­ety with­in re­cent times? Do you see this cur­rent so­cial me­dia push back on racism as an ex­ten­sion of this?

I think that young peo­ple have al­ways been ac­tive mem­bers of so­ci­ety, speak­ing out against in­jus­tice go­ing back to the Black Pow­er Move­ment in the '70s. Young peo­ple have al­ways been ac­tive par­tic­i­pants, so this con­tin­ues along with that trend. Re­cent­ly young peo­ple con­tin­ue to make their voic­es heard and with so­cial me­dia every­one has ac­cess to their own plat­forms re­al­ly am­pli­fy­ing the is­sues that they want to see, and I think that main­stream me­dia has played a role, as well, har­mon­is­ing young peo­ple’s voic­es and giv­ing them a space.

5. What do you think makes this gen­er­a­tion– Gen­er­a­tion Z–as some say, ca­pa­ble of ef­fect­ing mean­ing­ful change in mind­sets, leg­is­la­tion and ul­ti­mate­ly in Trin­bag­on­ian so­ci­ety?

The rea­son why this gen­er­a­tion is able to cham­pi­on change and be able to see change hap­pen, not just in mind­sets is be­cause this gen­er­a­tion is look­ing at them­selves and not nec­es­sar­i­ly blam­ing oth­er gen­er­a­tions for what has hap­pened or er­rors of the past, but say­ing: Hey, this be­gins with us. We want to see a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go, a Trinidad and To­ba­go that is in­clu­sive, that em­pow­ers every­one. By do­ing that lev­el of in­tro­spec­tion and say­ing this is what we want and by ac­tive­ly work­ing to­wards it is what makes the dif­fer­ence.